Craft project redo

Redo - Revamp -  Cross my fingers hope I don't mess it up!!

Last Christmas I made a felt tree as I had seen on Pinterest....
This year I hung it up & decided that it just wasn't sturdy enough to hold up to my children....

So I decided it needed some reinforcements. 

This is a photo from last year..... Look how bright & crisp it looks.

After a year of storage & my kids playing with it for awhile this year, this was how it looked now...

 Now, please excuse the poor photo quality... my daughter was taking pictures that day. But, you can see it's very crinkled and floppy after storage & kids pulling on it.

And I did find out that the hot glue wasn't going to hold those presents on there with my son trying to rip them off.....

LOL!

So my plans are to reinforce it with some Pellon backing & then add more green felt to the back, so the white Pellon fabric isn't quite so visible. And then sew it all together and reinforce the presents with the sewing machine too.

So here is a getting started photo:

And after pinning the Pellon to the felt to cut it, I decided that was too thick, so thought I'd try some craft glue instead....
Shhhh! Don't tell hubby, I snuck it out of his cabinet. 

It seems to work well so far, but it is taking longer to dry and I have to wait to sew on it.

So now I am just waiting on it to dry and then I can see how the sewing part goes....

Will be back with photos of the finished, stronger, hopefully more durable felt Christmas tree later.

NOTE:

However, after I started constructing the reinforcements it dawned on me... 

it's going to make it harder to store now...

I have not figured that part out yet, but we'll see as we go.
I may have to hang it up in the closet until next year.....